HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE Part -2

 

A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE

 

·       American Literature does not easily lend itself to classification by time period.

·       Given the size of the United States and its varied population, there are often several literary movements happening at the same time.

·       However, this hasn't stopped literary scholars from attempting.

·       Here are some of the most commonly agreed upon periods of American literature from the colonial period to the present.

 

AThe Colonial Period (1607 – 1775)

·       This period encompasses the founding of Jamestown up to the Revolutionary War.

·       The majority of writings were historical, practical, or religious in nature.

·       Some writers not to miss from this period include Phillis Wheatley, Cotton Mather, William Bradford, Anne Bradstreet, and John Winthrop.

·       The first Slave Narrative, A Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings, and Surprizing Deliverance of Briton Hammon, a Negro Man, was published in Boston in 1760.

 

AThe Revolutionary Age (1765 – 1790)

·       Beginning a decade before the Revolutionary War and ending about 25 years later, this period includes the writings of Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton.

·       This is arguably the richest period of political writing since classical antiquity.

·       Important works include the “Declaration of Independence,” The Federalist Papers and the poetry of Joel Barlow and Philip Freneau.

 

AThe Early National Period (1775 – 1828)

·       This era in American Literature is responsible for notable first works, such as the first American comedy written for the stage (The Contrast by Royall Tyler, 1787) and the first American Novel (The Power of Sympathy by William Hill, 1789).

·       Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper and Charles Brockden Brown are credited with creating distinctly American fiction, while Edgar Allan Poe and William Cullen Bryant began writing poetry that was markedly different from that of the English tradition.

 

AThe American Renaissance (1828 – 1865)

·       Also known as the Romantic Period in America and the Age of Transcendentalism, this period is commonly accepted to be the greatest of American Literature.

·       Major writers include Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe and Herman Melville. 

·       Emerson, Thoreau and Margaret Fuller are credited with shaping the literature and ideals of many later writers. Other major contributions include the poetry of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the short stories of Melville, Poe, Hawthorne and Harriet Beecher Stowe.

·       In addition, this era is the inauguration point of American Literary Criticism, lead by Poe, James Russell Lowell and William Gilmore Simms.

·       The years 1853 and 1859 brought the first African-American novels (Clotel and Our Nig).

AThe Realistic Period (1865 – 1900)

·       As a result of the American Civil War, Reconstruction and the age of Industrialism, American ideals and self-awareness changed in profound ways, and American literature responded. 

·       Certain romantic notions of the American Renaissance are replaced by realistic descriptions of American life, such as those represented in the works of William Dean Howells, Henry James and Mark Twain.

·       This period also gave rise to regional writing, such as the works of Sarah Orne Jewett, Kate Chopin, Bret Harte, Mary Wilkins Freeman and George W. Cable.

·       In addition to Walt Whitman, another master poet, Emily Dickinson, appeared at this time.

 

AThe Naturalist Period (1900 – 1914)

·       This relatively short period is defined by its insistence on recreating life as life really is, even more so than the realists had been doing in the decades before.

·       American Naturalist writers such as Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser and Jack London created some of the most powerfully raw novels in American literary history.

·       Their characters are victims who fall prey to their own base instincts and to economic and sociological factors. Edith Wharton wrote some of her most beloved classics, such as The Custom of the Country (1913), Ethan Frome (1911) and House of Mirth (1905) during this time period.

 

AThe Modern Period (1914 – 1939)

·       After the American Renaissance, the Modern Period is the second most influential and artistically rich age of American writing.

·       Its major writers include such powerhouse poets as E.E. Cummings, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Carl Sandburg, T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

·       Novelists and other prose writers of the time include Willa Cather, John Dos Passos, Edith Wharton, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Gertrude Stein, Sinclair Lewis, Thomas Wolfe and Sherwood Anderson.

·       The Modern Period contains within it certain major movements including the Jazz Age, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Lost Generation.

·       Many of these writers were influenced by World War I and the disillusionment that followed, especially the expatriates of the Lost Generation.

·       Furthermore, the Great Depression and the New Deal resulted in some of America’s greatest social issue writing, such as the novels of Faulkner and Steinbeck, and the drama of Eugene O’Neill.

 

AThe Beat Generation (1944 – 1962)

·       Beat writers, such as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, were devoted to anti-traditional literature, in poetry and prose, and anti-establishment politics.

·       This time period saw a rise in confessional poetry and sexuality in literature, which resulted in legal challenges and debates over censorship in America.

·       William S. Burroughs and Henry Miller are two writers whose works faced censorship challenges and who, along with other writers of the time, inspired the counterculture movements of the next two decades.

AThe Contemporary Period (1939 – Present)

·       After World War II, American literature becomes broad and varied in terms of theme, mode, and purpose.

·       Currently, there is little consensus as to how to go about classifying the last 80 years into periods or movements – more time must pass, perhaps, before scholars can make these determinations.

·       That being said, there are a number of important writers since 1939 whose works may already be considered “classic” and who are likely to become canonized.  Some of these are:  Kurt Vonnegut, Amy Tan, John Updike, Eudora Welty, James Baldwin, Sylvia Plath, Arthur Miller, Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, Joan Didion, Thomas Pynchon, Elizabeth Bishop, Tennessee Williams, Sandra Cisneros, Richard Wright, Tony Kushner, Adrienne Rich, Bernard Malamud, Saul Bellow, Joyce Carol Oates, Thornton Wilder, Alice Walker, Edward Albee, Norman Mailer, John Barth, Maya Angelou and Robert Penn Warren.

 

 

 

 

AWalt Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892)

 

·       Walter "Walt" Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist, and journalist.

·       A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works.

·       Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse.

·       His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality.

·       Born in Huntington on Long Island, Whitman worked as a journalist, a teacher, a government clerk, and—in addition to publishing his poetry—was a volunteer nurse during the American Civil War.

·       Early in his career, he also produced a temperance novel, Franklin Evans (1842). Whitman's major work, Leaves of Grass, was first published in 1855 with his own money.

·       The work was an attempt at reaching out to the common person with an American epic. He continued expanding and revising it until his death in 1892.

·       After a stroke towards the end of his life, he moved to Camden, New Jersey, where his health further declined.

·       When he died at age 72, his funeral became a public spectacle.

 

AWorks by Whitman

 

v Poetry

 

§  Leaves of Grass

§  Good-Bye, My Fancy

§  Passage to India

§  Drum Taps

§  Sequel to Drum Taps

 

v Prose

 

§  Complete Prose Works (David McKay, 1892)

§  November Boughs (David McKay, 1888)

§  Memoranda During the War (self-published, 1875)

§  Democratic Vistas (David McKay, 1871)

§  Franklin Evans; or, The Inebriate (New World, 1842)

 

 

 

 

AEmily Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886)

 

·       Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet.

·       Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts. Although part of a prominent family with strong ties to its community, Dickinson lived much of her life in reclusive isolation.

·       After studying at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she briefly attended the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family's house in Amherst.

·       Considered an eccentric by locals, she developed a noted penchant for white clothing and became known for her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, to even leave her bedroom.

·       Dickinson never married, and most friendships between her and others depended entirely upon correspondence.

·       Dickinson was a recluse for the later years of her life.

·       While Dickinson was a prolific private poet, fewer than a dozen of her nearly 1,800 poems were published during her lifetime.

·       The work that was published during her lifetime was usually altered significantly by the publishers to fit the conventional poetic rules of the time.

·       Dickinson's poems are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation.

·       Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends.

·       Although Dickinson's acquaintances were most likely aware of her writing, it was not until after her death in 1886—when Lavinia, Dickinson's younger sister, discovered her cache of poems—that the breadth of her work became apparent to the public.

·       Her first collection of poetry was published in 1890 by personal acquaintances Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd, though both heavily edited the content.

·       A complete, and mostly unaltered, collection of her poetry became available for the first time when scholar Thomas H. Johnson published The Poems of Emily Dickinson in 1955.

 

APoetry

 

v Dickinson's poems generally fall into three distinct periods, the works in each period having certain general characters in common.

 

§  Pre-1861. These are often conventional and sentimental in nature. Thomas H. Johnson, who later published The Poems of Emily Dickinson, was able to date only five of Dickinson's poems before 1858. Two of these are mock valentines done in an ornate and humorous style, and two others are conventional lyrics, one of which is about missing her brother Austin. The fifth poem, which begins "I have a Bird in spring", conveys her grief over the feared loss of friendship and was sent to her friend Sue Gilbert.

§  1861–1865. This was her most creative period—these poems represent her most vigorous and creative work. Johnson estimated that she composed 86 poems in 1861, 366 in 1862, 141 in 1863, and 174 in 1864. He also believed that during this period, she fully developed her themes of life and mortality.

§  Post-1866. It is estimated that two-thirds of the entire body of her poetry was written before this year.

ALangston Hughes (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967)

 

·       James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri.

·       Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri.

·       He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form called jazz poetry. Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance in New York City.

·       He famously wrote about the period that "the negro was in vogue", which was later paraphrased as "when Harlem was in vogue".

·       Langston Hughes was an American poet, novelist, and playwright whose African-American themes made him a primary contributor to the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

·       He published his first poem in 1921. He attended Columbia University, but left after one year to travel.

·       His poetry was later promoted by Vachel Lindsay, and Hughes published his first book in 1926.

·       He went on to write countless works of poetry, prose and plays, as well as a popular column for the Chicago Defender. He died on May 22, 1967.

 

◪The Harlem Renaissance   Hughes graduated from high school in 1920 and spent the following year in Mexico with his father. Around this time, Hughes' poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" was published in The Crisis magazine and was highly praised. In 1921 Hughes returned to the United States and enrolled at Columbia University where he studied briefly, and during which time he quickly became a part of Harlem's burgeoning cultural movement, what is commonly known as the Harlem Renaissance. But Hughes dropped out of Columbia in 1922 and worked various odd jobs around New York for the following year, before signing on as a steward on a freighter that took him to Africa and Spain. He left the ship in 1924 and lived for a brief time in Paris, where he continued to develop and publish his poetry.

 

 

AWorks by Hughes

 

v Poetry collections

§  The Weary Blues, Knopf, 1926

§  Fine Clothes to the Jew, Knopf, 1927

§  The Negro Mother and Other Dramatic Recitations, 1931

§  Dear Lovely Death, 1931

§  The Dream Keeper and Other Poems, Knopf, 1932

§  Scottsboro Limited: Four Poems and a Play, Golden Stair Press, N.Y., 1932

§  A New Song (1938, incl. the poem "Let America be America Again")

§  Note on Commercial Theatre, 1940

§  Shakespeare in Harlem, Knopf, 1942

§  Freedom's Plow, New York: Musette Publishers, 1943

§  Jim Crow's Last Stand, Atlanta: Negro Publication Society of America, 1943

§  Fields of Wonder, Knopf, 1947

§  One-Way Ticket, 1949

§  Montage of a Dream Deferred, Holt, 1951

§  Selected Poems of Langston Hughes, 1958

§  Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz, Hill & Wang, 1961

§  The Panther and the Lash: Poems of Our Times, 1967

§  The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, Knopf, 1994

 

v Novels and short story collections

 

§  Not Without Laughter. Knopf, 1930

§  The Ways of White Folks, Knopf, 1934

§  Simple Speaks His Mind, 1950

§  Laughing to Keep from Crying, Holt, 1952

§  Simple Takes a Wife, 1953

§  Sweet Flypaper of Life, photographs by Roy DeCarava. 1955

§  Simple Stakes a Claim, 1957

§  Tambourines to Glory, 1958

§  The Best of Simple, 1961

§  Simple's Uncle Sam, 1965

§  Something in Common and Other Stories, Hill & Wang, 1963

§  Short Stories of Langston Hughes, Hill & Wang, 1996

 

v Non-fiction books

 

§  The Big Sea, New York: Knopf, 1940

§  Famous American Negroes, 1954

§  Famous Negro Music Makers, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1955

§  I Wonder as I Wander, New York: Rinehart & Co., 1956

§  A Pictorial History of the Negro in America, with Milton Meltzer. 1956

§  Famous Negro Heroes of America, 1958

§  Fight for Freedom: The Story of the NAACP. 1962

 

 

 

 

v Major plays

 

§  Mule Bone, with Zora Neale Hurston, 1931

§  Mulatto, 1935 (renamed The Barrier, an opera, in 1950)

§  Troubled Island, with William Grant Still, 1936

§  Little Ham, 1936

§  Emperor of Haiti, 1936

§  Don't You Want to be Free?, 1938

§  Street Scene, contributed lyrics, 1947

§  Tambourines to Glory, 1956

§  Simply Heavenly, 1957

§  Black Nativity, 1961

§  Five Plays by Langston Hughes, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1963

§  Jerico-Jim Crow, 1964

 

v Books for children

 

§  Popo and Fifina, with Arna Bontemps, 1932

§  The First Book of the Negroes, 1952

§  The First Book of Jazz, 1954

§  Marian Anderson: Famous Concert Singer, with Steven C. Tracy, 1954

§  The First Book of Rhythms, 1954

§  The First Book of the West Indies, 1956

§  First Book of Africa, 1964

§  Black Misery, illustrated by Arouni, 1969; reprinted 1994, Oxford University Press.